13 Cool Games We Just Saw At PAX East That Should Be On Your Radar

PAX East took place in Boston over the past week, and I was on the show floor playing games, chatting with devs, and buying a very expensive KPop Demon Hunters print. I’ve rounded up the best games I saw so you can keep them on your radar. 

Grave Seasons

I played Grave Seasons at last year’s Summer Game Fest and enjoyed the way it subverted the typical farming sim/cozy game aesthetic to deliver something decidedly not cozy. While you’re tending to your crops, a supernatural serial killer is claiming victims in your town. Developer Perfect Garbage is taking a genre that is often oversaturated and adding its own horror-driven twist. If you’ve had enough of developers chasing Stardew Valley’s success, Grave Seasons may inject just enough mystery, scares, and intrigue to draw you back in.

Pokémon Champions

Pokémon Champions has a fine line to walk as it tries to get casual Pokemon players to engage with the most dense parts of the series’ turn-based RPG systems. Even as a decades-long veteran, I’m unsure if it’s going to be for me. But I do know this is a game the Pokémon competitive space has needed for a long time, and it’s gonna be cool to see what a dedicated battle simulator looks like when it’s getting official long-term support. 

Kiln

Double Fine’s pottery-based hero shooter/brawler/tower defense game shouldn’t work, but I’ve learned not to doubt the Psychonauts developer’s ability to deliver something off the wall that still has a sturdy foundation. Kiln’s pottery creation suite is fun to mess around with, and the actual shape of your pot determines how it will move throughout a battlefield when it’s brought to life. The size and shape of your pottery are strategic decisions as you send it to the beat-em-up stage to defend objectives and take part in team fights, and there are some surprising skill checks as you make the most of your pot’s specialized movesets. I don’t know if Kiln has legs for the long term, but what I played was an impressive, fluid brawler that encourages experimentation in a genre that often lets you get too set in your ways. I’ll play a few more rounds when the game comes out on April 23.

Rain98

Rain98 is using ‘90s aesthetics to talk about modern-day despair. The visual novel follows a time-displaced main character from today who has somehow ended up in 1998 Tokyo in the apartment of a young woman who is ready for it all to end. While your appearance obviously throws off her plan for personal self-destruction, hearing about how things haven’t really gotten better in the decades that followed just tells her that maybe the future isn’t worth saving, and she has a better idea: destroy it all. What I played of Rain98 really spoke to me; it’s an introspective work that looks at how we can get to the point where we don’t care to go on anymore, and extrapolates it out into something with ramifications that go way beyond one person’s life. That’s the kind of pontificating that gets my attention.

Cyberpunk TCG

There were a lot of trading card games at PAX, but the one I actually took time to try out was the Cyberpunk Trading Card Game. I wasn’t able to spend a ton of time at the booth (me and freelance writer Moises Taveras weren’t able to finish a game before the next wave of folks came through), but what I did find was a relatively approachable TCG full of characters and worldbuilding I already love from my time in Cyberpunk 2077. As Cyberpunk continues to expand beyond its tabletop roots, it’s nice to also see it come back to them in a way that will give me cardboard art of Kerry Eurodyne.

Throwback! Jai-Alai Heroes

When I first saw Throwback! Jai-Alai Heroes on the show floor, I thought its arcade cabinet demo was just a bit of showmanship. Most of the games you see at PAX are hooked up to a TV with a controller, but the retro-style jai alai game was in a bespoke arcade machine. It turns out, that’s because it’s an arcade-exclusive game that is only playable in a few locations nationwide. Developer Astro Crow explains that while Throwback! was going to be on home platforms initially, the decision to keep it an arcade exclusive came from hopes that tapping into a smaller, less saturated market would help the game stand out. What I was able to play has me hopeful it will show up soon in New York City, because right now the closest cabinet is in Ohio and I don’t feel like going there.

The Secret of Crystal Mountain

If you had told me about 20 years ago, when my favorite games were Sly Cooper and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, that someone would one day make a Zelda-style puzzle platformer, I would have told you that it would become my favorite game. The Secret of Crystal Mountain is basically that, marrying pretty fluid traversal mechanics with the eerie temple exploration and puzzle-solving of old school Zelda. I’m definitely intrigued by how both sides of its mechanics will evolve over the course of a full game.

Canvas City

I love when a game can bring a distinct style and attitude to a genre, and Canvas City is doing that for tactics RPGs with its colorful skatepunk aesthetic and vibe. It’s got turn-based tactics, for sure, but I was more drawn in by its Jet Set Radio-esque look and focus on sticking it to the man by tagging the environment with your art and skating across the battlefield. I love a good riffing on a concept, and Canvas City is clever enough to draw me in.

Fishbowl

Fishbowl is all about doing mundane things while the weight of grief sits on your shoulders. Imissmyfriends.studio’s narrative adventure game follows Alo, a young woman who is adapting to a new job in a new city, all while trying to push past the loss of her grandmother which sits heavily on her mind. Grief is isolating on its own, but moving forward into a new stage of your life can feel particularly impossible while you’re dragging it with you. Fishbowl explores this struggle through a fusion of narrative elements and life-sim gameplay that emphasizes just how tough completing tasks and getting through the day can be. It’s got a cozy aesthetic, but it’s hitting on something very real.

Gnaw

Gnaw mixes so many disparate elements it sounds like a fever dream, but it’s still a delight to play. The Metroidvania is set in a pre-apocalyptic dinosaur civilization that looks like a modern-day urban metropolis that’s being pelted by meteors. Mack Ripley, a regular dinosaur living a regular life, is transformed into a superpowered living weapon, and it’s up to him to save the day. Gnaw is fast-paced, makes you think on your feet, and gives you a varied arsenal of tools to work with, all in a grimy comic-book style that pops on-screen. 

Of the Devil

For the Danganronpa and Ace Attorney heads in the room, Of the Devil is a stylish, cyberpunk, episodic adventure game about defending the innocent when they’re presumed guilty. The game’s prologue episode is free-to-play, with each subsequent episode rolling out for $10. The first two episodes are available now, with a third on the way, and if you’ve been looking for a new court case mystery game, you should give it a shot.

Reclaim! Azhe-giiwewining

Reclaim! is a point-and-click adventure game by Grassroots Indigenous Multimedia, a nonprofit that works to teach the Ojibwe language. Every character speaks the language (with English subtitles), and the game is heavily inspired by traditional Ojibwe culture. Reclaim! stars Miskwaa, a young girl who is lost in a forest inhabited by spirit animals that help guide her home. What I played was a bit simple compared to the point-and-click adventures of old, but its cultural context helps differentiate it and give it something you won’t find pretty much anywhere else.

Poly Fighter

Poly Fighter was far and away my favorite game I played at PAX East. The fighting game roguelike starts off pretty simple. You pick a character with pretty straightforward moves, and make your way through the first few unremarkable fights. However, as you progress and gain new abilities and perks, Poly Fighter’s depth quickly reveals itself. You’re essentially making a fighting game moveset up on the fly, adapting your strategies and playstyle to whatever new moves you get and the play space they open up. Fighting games are typically a social experience, so I understand why someone might not find a single-player fighting game all that appealing, but Poly Fighter’s raw distillation of fighting game mechanics and adaptability gets at the heart of what makes this genre sing.